“But by’m by, between two squalls, he made bold to lift his head and look, and then by the light—a bluish color ’twas—he saw all the coast clear away to Manacle Point, and off the Manacles in the thick of the weather, a sloop-of-war with topgallants housed, driving stern foremost toward the reef. It was she, of course, that was burning the fire. My father could see the white streak and the ports of her quite plain as she rose to it, a little outside the breakers, and he guessed easy enough that her captain had just managed to wear ship and was trying to force her nose to the sea with the help of her small bower anchor and the scrap or two of canvas that hadn’t yet been blown out of her. But while he looked, she fell off, giving her broadside to it, foot by foot, and drifting back on the breakers around Carn Du and the Varses. The rocks lie so thick thereabout that ’twas a toss up which she struck first; at any rate, my father couldn’t tell at the time, for just then the flare died down and went out.
“Well, sir, he turned then in the dark and started back for Coverack to cry the dismal tidings—though well knowing ship and crew to be past any hope, and as he turned the wind lifted him and tossed him forward ‘like a ball,’ as he’d been saying, and homeward along the foreshore. As you know, ’tis ugly work, even by daylight, picking your way among the stones there, and my father was prettily knocked about at first in the dark. But by this ’twas nearer seven than six o’clock, and the day spreading. By the time he reached North Corner, a man could see to read print; hows’ever, he looked neither out to sea nor toward Coverack, but headed straight for the first cottage—the same that stands above North Corner today. A man named Billy Ede lived there then, and when my father burst into the kitchen bawling, ‘Wreck! wreck!’ he saw Billy Ede’s wife, Ann, standing there in her clogs with a shawl over her head, and her clothes wringing wet.
“‘Save the chap,’ says Billy Ede’s wife, Ann. ‘What d’ee mean by crying stale fish at that rate?’
“‘But ’tis a wreck, I tell ’e,’
“‘I’v a-zeed’n, too; and so has every one with an eye in his head,’
“And with that she pointed straight over my father’s shoulder, and he turned; and there, close under Dolor Point, at the end of Coverack town he saw another wreck washing, and the point black with people, like emmets, running to and fro in the morning light. While he stood staring at her, he heard a trumpet sounded on board, the notes coming in little jerks, like a bird rising against the wind; but faintly, of course, because of the distance and the gale blowing—though this had dropped a little.
“‘She’s a transport,’ said Billy Ede’s wife, Ann, ‘and full of horse-soldiers, fine long men. When she struck they must ha’ pitched the horses over first to lighten the ship, for a score of dead horses had washed in afore I left, half an hour back. An’ three or four soldiers, too—fine long corpses in white breeches and jackets of blue and gold. I held the lantern to one. Such a straight young man.’
“My father asked her about the trumpeting.
“‘That’s the queerest bit of all. She was burnin’ a light when me an’ my man joined the crowd down there. All her masts had gone; whether they carried away, or were cut away to ease her, I don’t rightly know. Her keelson was broke under her and her bottom sagged and stove, and she had just settled down like a setting hen—just the leastest list to starboard; but a man could stand there easy. They had rigged up ropes across her, from bulwark to bulwark, an’ beside these the men were mustered, holding on like grim death whenever the sea made a clean breach over them, an’ standing up like heroes as soon as it passed. The captain an’ the officers were clinging to the rail of the quarter-deck, all in their golden uniforms, waiting for the end as if ’twas King George they expected. There was no way to help, for she lay right beyond cast of line, though our folk tried it fifty times. And beside them clung a trumpeter, a whacking big man, an’ between the heavy seas he would lift his trumpet with one hand, and blow a call; and every time he blew the men gave a cheer. There (she says)—hark ’ee now—there he goes agen! But you won’t hear no cheering any more, for few are left to cheer, and their voices weak. Bitter cold the wind is, and I reckon it numbs their grip o’ the ropes, for they were dropping off fast with every sea when my man sent me home to get his breakfast. Another wreck, you say? Well, there’s no hope for the tender dears if ’tis the Manacles. You’d better run down and help yonder; though ’tis little help any man can give. Not one came in alive while I was there. The tide’s flowing, an’ she won’t hold together another hour, they say.’
“Well, sure enough, the end was coming fast when my father got down to the Point. Six men had been cast up alive, or just breathing—a seaman and five troopers. The seaman was the only one that had breath to speak; and while they were carrying him into the town, the word went round that the ship’s name was the Despatch, transport, homeward bound from Corunna, with a detachment of the Seventh Hussars, that had been fighting out there with Sir John Moore. The seas had rolled her further over by this time, and given her decks a pretty sharp slope; but a dozen men still held on, seven by the ropes near the ship’s waist, a couple near the break of the poop, and three on the quarter-deck. Of these three my father made out one to be the skipper; close to him clung an officer in full regimentals—his name, they heard after, was Captain Duncanfield; and last came the tall trumpeter; and if you’ll believe me, the fellow was making shift there, at the very last, to blow ‘God Save the King.’ What’s more, he got to ‘Send us victorious,’ before an extra big sea came bursting across and washed them off the deck—every man but one of the pair beneath the poop—and he dropped his hold before the next wave; being stunned, I reckon. The others went out of sight at once, but the trumpeter—being, as I said, a powerful man as well as a tough swimmer—rose like a duck, rode out a couple of breakers, and came in on the crest of the third. The folks looked to see him broke like an egg at their very feet; but when the smother cleared, there he was, lying face downward on a ledge below them; and one of the men that happened to have a rope round him—I forget the fellow’s name, if I ever heard it—jumped down and grabbed him by the ankle as he began to slip back. Before the next big sea, the pair were hauled high enough to be out of harm, and another heave brought them up to grass. Quick work, but master trumpeter wasn’t quite dead; nothing worse than a cracked head and three staved ribs. In twenty minutes or so they had him in bed, with the doctor to tend him.
Now was the time—nothing being left alive upon the transport—for my father to tell of the sloop he’d seen driving upon the Manacles. And when he got a hearing, though the most were set upon salvage, and believed a wreck in the hand, so to say, to be worth half a dozen they couldn’t see, a good few volunteered to start off with him and have a look. They crossed Lowland Point; no ship to be seen on the Manacles nor anywhere upon the sea. One or two was for calling my father a liar. ‘Wait till we come to Dean Point,’ said he. Sure enough, on the far side of Dean Point they found the sloop’s mainmast washing about with half a dozen men lashed to it, men in red jackets, every mother’s son drowned and staring; and a little further on, just under the Dean, three or four bodies cast up on the shore, one of them a small drummer-boy, side-drum and all; and nearby part of a ship’s gig, with H.M.S. Primrose cut on the sternboard. From this point on the shore was littered thick with wreckage and dead bodies—the most of them marines in uniform—and in Godrevy Cove, in particular, a heap of furniture from the captain’s cabin, and among it a water-tight box, not much damaged, and full of papers, by which, when it came to be examined, next day, the wreck was easily made out to be the Primrose of eighteen guns, outward bound from Portsmouth, with a fleet of transports for the Spanish war—thirty sail, I’ve heard, but I’ve never heard what became of them. Being handled by merchant skippers, no doubt they rode out the gale, and reached the Tagus safe and sound. Not but what the captain of the Primrose—Mein was his name—did quite right to try and club-haul his ves
sel when he found himself under the land; only he never ought to have got there, if he took proper soundings. But it’s easy talking.
“The Primrose, sir, was a handsome vessel—for her size one of the handsomest in the King’s service—and newly fitted out at Plymouth Dock. So the boys had brave pickings from her in the way of brass-work, ship’s instruments, and the like, let alone some barrels of stores not much spoiled. They loaded themselves with as much as they could carry, and started for home, meaning to make a second journey before the preventive men got wind of their doings, and came to spoil the fun. ‘Hullo!’ says my father, and dropped his gear, ‘I do believe there’s a leg moving!’ and running fore, he stooped over the small drummer-boy that I told you about. The poor little chap was lying there, with his face a mass of bruises, and his eyes closed; but he had shifted one leg an inch or two, and was still breathing. So my father pulled out a knife, and cut him free from his drum—that was lashed on to him with a double turn of Manila rope—and took him up and carried him along here to this very room that we’re sitting in. He lost a good deal by this; for when he went back to fetch the bundle he’d dropped, the preventive men had got hold of it, and were thick as thieves along the foreshore; so that ’twas only by paying one or two to look the other way that he picked up anything worth carrying off; which you’ll allow to be hard, seeing that he was the first man to give news of the wreck.
“Well, the inquiry was held, of course, and my father gave evidence, and for the rest they had to trust to the sloop’s papers, for not a soul was saved besides the drummer-boy, and he was raving in a fever, brought on by the cold and the fright. And the seaman and the five troopers gave evidence about the loss of the Despatch. The tall trumpeter, too, whose ribs were healing, came forward and kissed the book; but somehow his head had been hurt in coming ashore, and he talked foolish-like, and ’twas easy seen he would never be a proper man again. The others were taken up to Plymouth, and so went their ways; but the trumpeter stayed on in Coverack; and King George, finding he was fit for nothing, sent him down a trifle of a pension after a while—enough to keep him in board and lodging, with a bit of tobacco over.
“Now the first time that this man—William Tallifer he called himself—met with the drummer-boy, was about a fortnight after the little chap had bettered enough to be allowed a short walk out of doors, which he took, if you please, in full regimentals. There never was a soldier so proud of his dress. His own suit had shrunk a brave bit with the salt water; but into ordinary frock an’ corduroy he declared he would not get, not if he had to go naked the rest of his life; so my father—being a good-natured man, and handy with the needle—turned to and repaired damages with a piece or two of scarlet cloth cut from the jacket of one of the drowned Marines. Well, the poor little chap chanced to be standing, in this rig out, down by the gate of Gunner’s Meadow, where they had buried two score and over of his comrades. The morning was a fine one, early in March month; and along came the cracked trumpeter, likewise taking a stroll.
“‘Hullo!’ says he; ‘good mornin’! And what might you be doin’ here?’
“‘I was a-wishin’,’ says the boy, ‘I had a pair o’ drumsticks. Our lads were buried yonder without so much as a drum tapped or a musket fired; and that’s not Christian burial for British soldiers.’
“‘Phut!’ says the trumpeter, and spat on the ground; ‘a parcel of Marines!’
“The boy eyed him a second or so, and answered up: ‘If I’d a tav of turf handy, I’d bung it at your mouth, you greasy cavalryman, and learn you to speak respectful of your betters. The Marines are the handiest body o’ men in the service.’
“The trumpeter looked down on him from the height of six-foot-two, and asked: ‘Did they die well?’
“‘They died very well. There was a lot of running to and fro at first, and some of the men began to cry, and a few to strip off their clothes. But when the ship fell off for the last time, Captain Mein turned and said something to Major Griffiths, the commanding officer on board, and the Major called out to me to beat to quarters. It might have been for a wedding, he sang it out so cheerful. We’d had word already that ’twas to be parade order; and the men fell in as trim and decent as if they were going to church. One or two even tried to shave at the last moment. The Major wore his medals. One of the seamen, seeing I had work to keep the drum steady—the sling being a bit loose for me, and the wind what you remember—lashed it tight with a piece of rope; and that saved my life afterward, a drum being as good as cork until it’s stove. I kept beating away until every man was on deck—and then the Major formed them up and told them to die like British soldiers, and the chaplain was in the middle of a prayer when she struck. In ten minutes she was gone. That was how they died, cavalryman.’
“‘And that was very well done, drummer of the Marines. What’s your name?’
“‘John Christian.’
“‘Mine’s William George Tallifer, trumpeter of the Seventh Light Dragoons—the Queen’s Own. I played “God Save the King” while our men were drowning. Captain Duncanfield told me to sound a call or two, to put them in heart; but that matter of “God Save the King” was a notion of my own. I won’t say anything to hurt the feelings of a Marine, even if he’s not much over five-foot tall; but the Queen’s Own Hussars is a tearin’ fine regiment. As between horse and foot, ’tis a question o’ which gets a chance. All the way from Sahagun to Corunna ’twas we that took and gave the knocks—at Mayorga and Rueda, and Bennyventy.’—The reason, sir, I can speak the names so pat, is that my father learnt them by heart afterward from the trumpeter, who was always talking about Mayorga and Rueda and Bennyventy—‘We made the rear-guard, after General Paget; and drove the French every time; and all the infantry did was to sit about in wine-shops till we whipped ’em out, an’ steal an’ straggle an’ play the tom-fool in general. And when it came to a stand-up fight at Corunna, ’twas we that had to stay seasick aboard the transports, an’ watch the infantry in the thick o’ the caper. Very well they behaved, too—’specially the Fourth Regiment, an’ the Forty-Second Highlanders and the Dirty Half-Hundred. Oh, ay; they’re decent regiments, all three. But the Queen’s Own Hussars is a tearin’ fine regiment. So you played on your drum when the ship was goin’ down? Drummer John Christian, I’ll have to get you a new pair of sticks.’”
The very next day the trumpeter marched into Helston, and got a carpenter there to turn him a pair of box-wood drumsticks for the boy. And this was the beginning of one of the most curious friendships you ever heard tell of. Nothing delighted the pair more than to borrow a boat off my father and pull out to the rocks where the Primrose and the Despatch had struck and sunk; and on still days ’twas pretty to hear them out there off the Manacles, the drummer playing his tattoo—for they always took their music with them—and the trumpeter practicing calls, and making his trumpet speak like an angel. But if the weather turned roughish, they’d be walking together and talking; leastwise the youngster listened while the other discoursed about Sir John’s campaign in Spain and Portugal, telling how each little skirmish befell; and of Sir John himself, and General Baird, and General Paget, and Colonel Vivian, his own commanding officer, and what kind of men they were; and of the last bloody stand-up at Corunna, and so forth, as if neither could have enough.
But all this had to come to an end in the late summer, for the boy, John Christian, being now well and strong again, must go up to Plymouth to report himself. ’Twas his own wish (for I believe King George had forgotten all about him), but his friend wouldn’t hold him back. As for the trumpeter, my father had made an arrangement to take him on as lodger, as soon as the boy left; and on the morning fixed for the start, he was up at the door here by five o’clock, with his trumpet slung by his side, and all the rest of his belongings in a small valise. A Monday morning it was, and after breakfast he had fixed to walk with the boy some way on the road toward Helston, where the coach start
ed. My father left them at breakfast together, and went out to meat the pig, and do a few odd morning jobs of that sort. When he came back, the boy was still at table, and the trumpeter sat with the rings in his hands, hitched together just as they be at this moment.
“‘Look at this,’ he says to my father, showing him the lock. ‘I picked it up off a starving brass-worker in Lisbon, and it is not one of your common locks that one word of six letters will open at any time. There’s janius in this lock; for you’ve only to make the rings spell any six-letter word you please and snap down the lock upon that, and never a soul can open it—not the maker, even—until somebody comes along that knows the word you snapped it on. Now Johnny here’s goin’, and he leaves his drum behind him; for, though he can make pretty music on it, the parchment sags in wet weather, by reason of the sea-water gettin’ at it; an’ if he carries it to Plymouth, they’ll only condemn it and give him another. And, as for me, I shan’t have the heart to put lip to the trumpet any more when Johnny’s gone. So we’ve chosen a word together, and locked ’em together upon that; and, by your leave, I’ll hang ’em here together on the hook over your fireplace. Maybe Johnny’ll come back; maybe not. Maybe, if he comes, I’ll be dead an’ gone, an’ he’ll take ’em apart an’ try their music for old sake’s sake. But if he never comes, nobody can separate ’em; for nobody beside knows the word. And if you marry and have sons, you can tell ’em that here are tied together the souls of Johnny Christian, drummer of the Marines, and William George Tallifer, once trumpeter of the Queen’s Own Hussars. Amen.’
The Third Ghost Story Megapack Page 10
